Banana What?
by Rhianwen
Summary: Following the events of Repression, Janeway comes to a decision: why get angsty when you can get even? Irredeemable silliness.
1. Chapter 1

Banana What?

* * *

Summary: After the events of Repression, Janeway comes to a decision: why get angsty when you can get even? Silly, silly, silly. Part one of two.

* * *

Disclaimer: Everyone in this story is the creation and property of the folks who came up with them. This story is making absolutely no profit, and not just because writing generally needs to be good to make money.

* * *

Author's Notes: I've developed something of an addiction as of late to dramatic, angsty post-Repression fic, so I thought I'd try my hand at my own. This is what came out. Sigh.

* * *

Janeway was pissed, in more ways than one.

The first was (nearly) entirely her own fault.

She had known, even as she was doing it, that downing very nearly a bottle of red wine by herself would not qualify as one of her more intelligent decisions of the week, but this had been quite easily the most awkward evening she'd ever had that didn't involve naked bath time baby photos or Cardassian bondage techniques.

The parts of her first date involving her mother and the baby albums beat out an hour meticulously avoiding the crazy-Bajoran-shaped elephant in the room, but only just.

Her goal in essentially chugging the first four glasses had been to grease the wheels of conversation, so to speak. After all, tension between the former Maquis crewmembers and…well, everyone else had been understandably high as of late, and she had the uncomfortable sensation that she hadn't exactly been helping with that, what with the whole utter inability to think of a civil non-work-related word to say to her First Officer and close friend of the past seven years. Maybe a little bit of liquid fortification would bring something to mind that amounted to more than "Hi," or "Um," or occasionally "Pass the salt."

However, somewhere between that third glass and the inevitable mad dash for the restroom, the second form of pissed-ness had begun to manifest itself, and a particularly severe belligerence had set in, upon which she had decided petulantly that if he thought that a lousy pinot would make up for a bloody mutiny, that was just fine, but she sure as hell wasn't sharing.

For the most part, Chakotay had seemed at peace with her decision, although once or twice he'd gotten that little between-the-brows wrinkle that meant he wanted badly to say something. This was, incidentally, generally after she had forgone the glass altogether and begun simply chugging from the bottle. Each time, he had seemed to think better of it when she had attempted to skewer him with a look, and had just gone back looking at her like she'd just tossed a whole basket of kittens out a window.

It was at about this point that he had given up – got the hint – and muttered something about leaving her to get some rest.

And although she had fully intended to go directly to bed upon his departure, he had made that infinitely wiser course of action impossible by suggesting it, and she had headed directly for the replicator and blown a good week's worth of _perfectly _good coffee rations on an oversized novelty bottle of scotch.

Unfortunately, this was about the point that she had begun to really think about the events of a few days ago, which led to her current state of full-on frothing rage.

It seemed, sadly, that no matter how much she wanted to blame the wine, she had been carrying a good deal of _completely_ unfair resentment over the whole mutiny with a side of attempted-murder thing, and it wasn't buried nearly as deeply as she had hoped.

She wondered vaguely if the aforementioned frothing state of mind was some sort of defense mechanism, but quickly dismissed this idea. Nope, no devastation or unease whatsoever, she was just pissed.

Somewhere between the fourth and fifth gulp, she arrived at the undeniable conclusion that all this high-road crap was just that.

Oh, yes; he needed to suffer.

Two more guzzles later saw her attempting to leap to her feet, in practice sort of sliding from her couch to land in a heap on the floor, as the beginnings of a Brilliant Idea began to form.

Since he had taken her ship, she would take something of equal value to him: his peace and quiet.

But how to best go about it?

Develop a sudden interest in a hobby involving hammers and chainsaws?

Too dangerous.

Generously loan her quarters to one of Voyager's many amorous young couples for a little noisy wall-sex for an evening while she spent another night curled up on the couch of her ready room?

Too messy, and too much potential for debilitating back pain – both for her and the young couple.

Finally get around to learning an instrument and teach herself the bagpipes?

This one had potential, she mused, but from what she could recall of Harry's struggles to save up for his clarinet, bagpipes could cost a _lot_ of replicator rations, and for some reason, she was a little short.

_Oh, shut up_, she snarled at the little voice in the back of her mind pointing emphatically to her rapidly disappearing beverage.

Meanwhile, this new form of annoyance by sound had merit. A little tampering with his computer, a few new additions to his musical selections, an infinite-repeat command with a lock that he would be unauthorized to override, and life would be jolly.

_Well, not his life_, she thought with a happy grin. It occurred to her briefly that this newfound sadistic streak might be cause for concern, but she quickly drop-kicked this notion directly out of mind.

It would be easy enough to pull off – the plan, not the drop-kicking. Ever since the Borg had helped them switch Voyager's woefully ineffective operating system from Windows to Linux during their brief alliance, the various parts of the ship were actually working compatibly with each other, which made things much easier. As an added bonus, the hours and hours she'd spent tucked away in cozy, pseudo-romantic settings with Seven of Nine in the past few years had even enabled her to _use_ said operating system.

Yes, a simple matter. However, there was a distinct risk of her subtle attempt at vengeance making its way outside of the two of them, with his overwhelming tendency to call immediately for Lieutenant Torres whenever anything went wrong around the ship.

He was hardly unique in this, she knew – it seemed that the poor woman ended up getting dragged into the middle of all manner of malfunctions, from exploding warp cores to clogged toilets. Just the other day, she'd had to sit on her hands to keep herself from lunging for her combadge and plaintively calling for B'Elanna's help when she'd accidentally replicated a live chicken instead of the bowl of chicken soup she'd been trying for.

Incidentally, sitting on her hands had made dealing with a spooked, rampaging chicken a lot more difficult, but eventually she'd figured out how to throw a shard of broken coffee mug with sufficient force and accuracy to behead her feathered friend, with her foot. Unfortunately, this had all but used up her meager supply of self-sufficiency, and Torres had received a sheepish call moments later, inquiring as to whether she had any experience in plucking a chicken.

Perhaps this over-reliance on Lieutenant Torres was rooted in the undeniable fact that even simple malfunctions aboard Voyager had an overwhelming tendency to spiral wildly out of control and cause something far more dangerous and usually engineering-related, even when rampaging poultry wasn't involved.

"Just my luck to end up with such a lemon," she muttered resentfully, and then froze in horror as she realized what she'd just said.

Scurrying toward the nearest bulkhead, arms outstretched, she attempted to enfold her poor, maligned ship in an apologetic hug.

"I didn't mean it, sweetheart," she burbled. "You know you're the bestest ship ever!"

Content that peace had been made, she staggered purposefully from her quarters in search of B'Elanna.

After all, if the poor girl was going to end up dragged into the middle of this anyway, it only made sense to warn her in advance.

* * *

When looking back in later days upon the whole misadventure, Janeway would admit that the first major surprise had been how readily Lieutenant Torres had jumped on board.

"—so he won't be able to turn it off. I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep it going yet, but—"

"Count me in."

She blinked, startled.

"Well, actually, I was going to handle it myself; I just wanted you to be aware that you might be getting an angry comm call in the wee small hours of the morning. You have my full authorization to ignore it and go back to sleep. You can even call him names first, if you want."

B'Elanna glared fiercely.

"Captain, with all due respect; you come in here, drunk off your ass, and tell me that you're planning a pretty evil prank on one of my oldest, closest friends—"

"I don't think it's completely unwarranted!"

"—and you're not even going to let me help? I don't think so!"

Deeply touched, Janeway gave the younger woman a slightly teary smile.

"Have I ever told you how glad I am to have you for a friend, B'Elanna?"

B'Elanna considered this.

"No, actually."

Janeway frowned.

"Are you sure? Because I thought I had."

"Nope," B'Elanna replied with a shrug. "You've told me I'm a brilliant engineer with a hell of a left hook, and I think you said I've got a sweet, sweet ass last time you had this much to drink, but you've never called me a friend before."

"Well…" She shoved the bottle of whiskey at her chief engineer. "Here. Alcohol speaks louder than words, and I only share my whiskey with friends."

B'Elanna accepted the bottle and peered dubiously at the contents for a long moment, about a scant half pint of the tawny liquid sloshing around. She was pretty sure that it had been close to half full when Janeway had showed up this evening, and statistics on backwash floated unappealingly through her mind.

Finally, she shrugged and downed the contents in a few hearty chugs before catching her captain's startled eye, laughing sheepishly, and handing her back the empty bottle.

"That's amazing! Is there some kind of trick to it?" Janeway finally asked, voice filled with awe.

"I think it's genetic," B'Elanna replied, giving her hand a slightly awkward consoling pat. Then she leapt unexpectedly to her feet. "Okay, let's go!"

"Where are we going?" Janeway asked as she was dragged bodily from the room.

B'Elanna grinned wickedly.

"We're going to find Tom. He knows all the best annoying songs."

"He does have a particular gift for the annoying," Janeway agreed, nodding thoughtfully.

"Yeah," B'Elanna huffed. "_Tell_ me about it."

* * *

If the first surprise was how enthusiastically Lieutenant Torres had hopped onto the Make-Chakotay-Suffer train, the second was how adamantly Lieutenant Paris opposed the whole thing.

After all, he had been shot in front of his own wife, who had then proceeded to just sort of kick him into a pile in the corner, stomp on his head a few times, and then scamper off to evict the Starfleet portions of the crew.

Somehow, she would have imagined that he might approve of a little light vengeance against the man who had authorized both the face-stomping and the eviction.

However, it seemed that Mr. Paris was much less adept in the fine art of holding grudges than she was.

"Come on, B'Elanna, we can't encourage this!" he muttered urgently to his wife in between careful glances at Janeway.

B'Elanna pondered this for a moment.

"I see. And…why the hell not?"

" Okay, first of all, look at her," Tom replied in a whisper.

B'Elanna looked accordingly, and suppressed a snicker at the sight of her captain attempting to start a bar fight with a nearby article of furniture.

"My money's on the coat rack," she confided.

"I don't know; the coat rack has the whole impervious to pain thing going, but the captain's pretty impervious too, when you make her mad enough. Although granted, the coat rack hasn't been drinking. That we know of, anyway…" Then, as he realized what he was saying, he shook his head, exasperated. "Look, the point is, she's not exactly thinking clearly."

"Or at all," B'Elanna added as Janeway threw her arms around the coat rack and offered a teary apology.

Nodding his emphatic agreement with this, Tom took the temporarily bipolar redhead by one arm and maneuvered her toward the couch. Hopefully, she wouldn't decide that it was 'looking at her funny' or something – he didn't particularly want to replace the whole room tonight.

"I know she knows that this wasn't anyone's fault," he explained to B'Elanna over his shoulder, "and once she's finished starting something with the furniture, she'll realize that. But in the meantime, do you really want to get behind a scheme to punish Chakotay for something he had no control over?" When his loving and beautiful wife continued to stare at him flatly, he sighed impatiently and continued. "B'Elanna, we had to sit through eight sessions of couple's therapy before you could stop being angry at yourself. It took hours of beating me senseless with a Wiffle bat before you could even look at me!" At this, he stopped and frowned. "Hey, wait a second; how did beating me up help you come to terms with letting me get hurt?"

"Beating you up is a cure for everything, Tom," Janeway informed him kindly from the couch.

"Thanks, Captain," he sighed.

"She's right, but that's not the point," B'Elanna said impatiently. "Look, I know he's feeling guilty as hell. That's why we have to do this!"

Tom considered this for a long moment.

"I don't follow."

"Right now, they won't even talk to each other because she's too mad to make the first move, and he knows she's mad and he's trying to give her space, because he feels terrible and he doesn't want push her, but she doesn't know that, and she's resenting the hell out of him because he hasn't bothered to say anything, and she thinks it's because it hasn't occurred to him to feel any remorse since technically, none of it was his fault, which she knows, but she can't quite make herself believe completely, which is making her even madder, because she feels like she has no right to feel this way, and now she's defensive too."

Briefly considering drawing up a map to better visualize this bizarre tangle of emotions, Tom nodded slowly.

"Okay, I get that – I think. But – and I can't believe I'm saying this – I don't think playing obnoxious pranks on Chakotay is going to make anyone feel better. Except possibly me, but I'm already feeling pretty good since we've stopped the Wiffle bat therapy."

"It will help! It'll make him so mad that he'll forget how guilty he feels, and they'll have one really good knock-down, drag-out fight, and everything can get back to normal!"

Tom sighed, casting a dubious look at his captain who, if her expression was anything to go on, was happily plotting the messy, painful death of the man in question. Or possibly pondering the best way to disassemble his television set from six feet away.

"Either that, or we'll be cleaning their blood off the walls for the rest of the trip home."

B'Elanna shrugged.

"Yeah, or that."

Tom rubbed a hand wearily over his eyes.

"Okay, look; I know there's nothing I can say that'll talk you – or you—" he added over his shoulder at Kathryn, who paused in her careful inspection of the thing on the bottom of her shoe and looked up questioningly. "—out of this, so I'm just going to go with it and deny my involvement later."

B'Elanna snuggled affectionately against his shoulder.

"Thank-you, honey! So," she continued excitedly, "what song should we use?"

"Well," Tom said thoughtfully, "we've got a long list of options. There have been a_ lot_ of annoying songs through the years. Now, are we going for loud?"

"Loud, but not too loud. I still have to live next door," Kathryn replied.

"With the hangover she's going to have tomorrow morning, we'd better make it the sound of silence," Tom muttered to B'Elanna.

Kathryn made a derisive gesture, somehow managing to nearly lose her balance despite being seated.

"Simon and Garfunkle? Come on, they're hardly annoying at all!"

Tom shook his head helplessly.

"Geez, she really is drunk."

"Should we feed her?" B'Elanna asked, eyeing Kathryn nervously. "I don't really want to clean regurgitated banana pancake out of the carpet all night, but it might sober her up a bit."

At this, Tom stopped short and turned to regard both women.

"Ladies," he said, a slow grin creeping over his face, "I think I've got the song."

* * *

End Notes: Geez, I think I've got every cliché in the book here. Also, I don't know where the idea came from that everyone on Voyager is totally dependent on B'Elanna to do everything. If anything, it's Seven of Nine. But I like the mental image of B'Elanna trying to pluck a chicken better. And anyway, if there's one thing I've learned about fanfiction, it's that what happened on the show has little bearing on anything.

Also, I don't entirely know what to make of my overwhelming obsession with getting Janeway drunk. I'm thinking of seeking help.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

* * *

Chakotay was exhausted.

Not only was he still sore pretty much everywhere from his brief tussle with Tuvok a few days back, the captain was still exhibiting all the good nature of a rabid woodland creature with a pinecone up its fuzzy little backside, and trying to keep the peace was starting to take a toll on him.

Not that he could particularly blame her; he didn't imagine that having your two best friends, for all intents and purposes, try to kill you would put most people in a particularly good mood.

Still, the stilted conversation and sad-puppy eyes were starting to get a little hard to handle. Particularly when he knew that any attempt to answer that big-eyed, beseeching gaze with a friendly word or kind gesture would be met with one of two responses: she would either wriggle determinedly out of any sort of contact and bolt, or death-glare his overtures into non-existence.

A handful of times over the past few days, he'd tried to bring up what had happened, get her to actually _express _what was going on in that pretty head so that he could get the opportunity to let her know that hey, he felt pretty rotten over it too, he really _wasn't_ particularly fond of waving weapons at her and the rest of his ultra-extended family, and finishing up by taking over her ship. However, whenever he managed to catch her alone and get a word in edgewise, she mysteriously came up with a big pile of priorities that absolutely could not wait another second.

He had been reluctantly prepared, at this point, to let her deal with it in her own time – there wasn't a known force in the universe that could make Kathryn Janeway do something she was disinclined to, anyway, and he didn't put much faith in the unknown in this case – until he had begun to notice the reactions of the crew.

It seemed a fairly even split: half were taking the command team's example and giving each other shifty, mistrusting eyes and generally avoiding all contact. The other half seemed to take a good deal of joy in giving the two of them the sort of knowing, amused looks often reserved for bickering couples in public places, which was little better.

Once or twice, he'd begun to say something, reproach her on the terrible example that the two of them were setting for the rest of the crew, but had backed off when the _puppy-dog_ showed signs of turning into a very pissed off and possibly rabid wolf. Although having his jugular ripped out literally as well as metaphorically would make a rather fitting end to the week, he was rather fond of it as it was, whole and in its proper place. This was, essentially, why he'd abandoned his initial plan this evening of simply badgering her until she finally talked to him about the week's events.

(He had, incidentally, been much more reluctant to abandon his second plan, which involved tying her up in some sort of vaguely erotic pose, _accidentally_ dislodging most of her clothes as he went, and then refusing to untie her until they'd had a long, meaningful conversation in which the animosity between them as of late would be resolved. Eventually, he had recognized this plan as far more dangerous than the first. As fond as he was of his jugular in tact and in its proper place, he was even fonder of his man-bits remaining in tact, and was rather ridiculously fond of the aforementioned in their proper place.)

Although, the plan he'd gone with hadn't ended much better.

The wine had been intended as a peace offering, of course, but he'd also wondered if a couple of glasses might lure out Tipsy Kathryn, or even Slightly Buzzed Kathryn. Both were significantly more communicative than the Mad as Hell and Trying Desperately to Hide It variety that had been present on the bridge all week.

Unfortunately, before either Tipsy or Slightly Buzzed could emerge, their far noisier and more unpredictable sister, Drunk Kathryn had made an appearance. While he had spent a certain degree of time around Drunk Kathryn in the past and found her a rather delightful companion, never had he done so while the object of her ire. Therefore, he found his role adjusted somewhat, from pillow to punching bag.

Well, sort of. In as much as she had spoken to him at all. Mostly she just sat there and glared at him around guzzles straight from the bottle as though she suspected him of plotting another mutiny that would begin with instituting ship-wide Prohibition.

Upon admitting to himself that he wasn't going to get any sort of conversation out of her this evening, meaningful or otherwise, he had eventually left her to get some rest, with the full intention of doing the same._  
_

"If this day can possibly get any worse," he muttered as he crawled into bed, "I swear I'll take up polka."

Thus content that the Fates had been sufficiently and stupidly tempted for the time being, he ordered the lights out and flopped almost immediately into unconsciousness.

_Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, Bananaphone!_

"What the_ hell_?" he breathed, out of bed in an instant.

_Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, Bananaphone!_

"Computer, turn off current musical selection!" he barked.

"Unable to comply," the computer replied, _smugly_ he would ever after insist, as the singer chose that moment to add helpfully,

_I've got this feeling, so appealing, for us to get together and sing—Sing! _

"Computer, end current musical selection before I _hurt_ you!"

"Unable to comply," the computer repeated.

"Why?" he ground out.

"Current musical selection is protected—"

Protected! Looking up quickly, he repeated the command and snapped out his override code.

"Unable to comply," the computer informed him cheerfully.

"_Why_?"

"Requested action requires Level 10 clearance."

"Level—oh, god_damn_it, Kathryn!"

"Please restate request."

"Shut up!"

"Please restate request."

_It grows in bunches, I've got my hunches, cellular, modular, interactive-odular…_

"Someone, please end my life," he groaned, rubbing his eyes wearily.

"Please restate request."

"ARGH!"

* * *

Meanwhile, just a short distance away, Kathryn was already dropping into the sleep of the blissfully content, the soft, indistinct strains of one of the most obnoxious songs in human history – punctuated by Chakotay's vehement critique of said song – the sweetest lullaby she could imagine.

* * *

Approximately three and a half minutes later saw Chakotay breathing a sigh of relief as the final strains of the song filled the air.

"Well, that was—"

_Boop-a-doop-a-doop-doop!_

"Dammit!"

_Boop-a-doop-a-doop-doop!_

"Okay…maybe she programmed it to play through twice and then shut up and let me sleep," he mused hopefully.

Twenty-three repetitions later, it began to dawn on him that perhaps the music wasn't going to turn off by itself, and Action would have to be taken.

"Chakotay to Janeway."

He was met with the distinct sound of a comm. badge being swatted around and repeatedly dropped by a particularly disoriented hand. Finally, a reply.

_"Mrrrggph?" _

He grinned at her sudden fluent grasp of the dialect of Hangover.

"Feeling a little under the weather, Captain?" he asked kindly, and far more loudly than necessary, relishing the warm happy glow that her groan of pain produced.

_"No, I'm just fine. I was asleep, if you must know."_

"Lucky you," he said flatly, glaring viciously in her general direction.

_"Ohh, are you having trouble sleeping?"_

Gritting his teeth until he could nearly hear them cracking, he determinedly tamped down the reply he _really _wanted to make.

"A little bit, yeah."

_"Why don't you try counting some sheep?" _

With this kind suggestion, the link terminated.

"…What just happened?" he demanded of no one in particular.

Nothing daunted, he tried again.

"Chakotay to Janeway."

_"Come on, that was what, two sheep? I think you need a few more than that."_

"I don't think imaginary sheep are going to solve this."

_"I hardly think you can make that judgment when you've given it so little time. Just go back to bed, and maybe throw in a goat or two."_

"Wait a—"

_"Goodnight, Chakotay."_

With a heavy sigh, he waited for the line to disconnect, already preparing to try again.

But then, faint but unmistakable, a childish tune reached his ears.

_"Neener, neener, neener."_

He stared at his comm. badge in disbelief as the line finally disconnected.

"That vindictive little—"

With a deep, calming breath, he bit back the rest of this decidedly annoyed statement.

"Okay, self, listen; you can't depend on Captain Crazypants to fix this. At this point, she's more likely to make things worse if you push the issue. Now, you've slept through a lot of things louder and more annoying than this in your life, so within the next two minutes, you are going to learn to ignore the music, and go calmly and sensibly to sleep."

Another fifteen minutes later saw him jamming his pillow over his head as though he intended to merge the two somehow. Sure, it was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe, but that was a small price to pay to have the Bananaphones pounding into his brain a little less.

* * *

Thirty seconds later saw him gasping for air, and throwing his pillow angrily at the wall.

"Okay, self, change of plans."

He reached for his comm. badge.

"Chakotay to Torres."

_"Torres here."_

"B'Elanna, I'm having some difficulties with my computer. Could you come take a look?"

Seconds passed in silence, before a sudden stream of vile profanities burst forth from the small device.

He blinked, bewildered.

"Uh, what?"

With a noise of fond impatience, Torres repeated her previous string of curses, this time much more slowly and calmly.

"Right," Chakotay sighed. "I guess that means you're not going to help me."

_"Nope! 'Night, Chakotay."_

"'Night," he said gloomily, although she had already terminated the link.

Well, _this _was just great. His last hope, gone just like that. Only thing to do now was sit tight, try desperately to filter out his surroundings, and wait for Kathryn's better nature to resurface.

Yeah; he was in for the long haul.

He kicked the leg of his coffee table. Dammit! If only he had paid attention when she was going on about their _fantastic_ new computer system, he might be able to find a way around this

"I miss the _old_ computer system," he pouted. Sure, it had an overwhelming tendency to freeze at inopportune moments, crash at equally inopportune moments, and make parts of the ship incompatible with other parts, but at least it was user-friendly. And incredibly easy to break into. This new system that Seven and her Borg pals had installed a few years back was just…confusing.

Ah, but wait! The little light bulb floating above his head was suggesting that there might be another way to handle this, that wouldn't involve fruitless wheedling to Kathryn _or_ B'elanna.

"Commander Chakotay to Seven of Nine."

_"What is it, Commander?"_

"Seven, I'm going to need your help with something…"

* * *

"Thank-you for coming so quickly, Seven," he said approximately five and a half minutes later. "I hope I didn't wake you."

She looked at him strangely.

"I do not sleep, Commander."

"Well, I hope I didn't interrupt your…recharging?"

"Regeneration. And yes, you did."

"Oh; sorry."

"It is irrelevant. What's the problem?"

He stared incredulously.

"What's the—Seven, don't you _hear_ that?"

She listened closely for a long moment, absorbing the background music.

"I don't understand," Seven said. "What is a Banana Phone?"

"Why don't you ask Captain Janeway?" he asked, glaring resentfully at the wall. "She's the one who found this number."

Mulling this idea over and apparently finding favour with it, Seven tapped her comm. badge.

"Seven of Nine to Captain Janeway."

_"Seven? What time is it?"_

If the young woman noticed the the remnants of the evening's unscheduled bender in her captain's voice, she showed no sign of it._  
_

"Captain, what is a Banana Phone?"

_"A Bananaphone! Good question, Seven. Unfortunately, the explanation is a little too complicated to go into here, but if you'd like to meet me in Holodeck 2, we can talk about it in more detail."_

"I will be there shortly," the young woman agreed, already starting for the door.

"Wait a minute!" Chakotay objected frantically. "You haven't—oh, never mind," he finished when he realized that he was talking to the empty spot that Seven had previously occupied.

Left alone once more with his extremely limited Raffi collection, he sighed heavily and headed for the replicator.

"Give me a green felt hat, a pair of suspenders, and a tuba. Apparently, this day _can_ get worse."

* * *

End Notes: Okay; so, in addition to my inexplicable obsession with getting Janeway drunk, I also have a deep and abiding urge to make Chakotay a total weenie.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

* * *

Harry was confused.

This was not the mild, good-natured confusion that he tended to experience whenever Tom, face planted firmly in both palms, revealed the source of whatever trouble he was embroiled in this week.

Nor was it the slightly more severe confusion that followed when he found himself neck-deep in the aforementioned trouble without any idea of how it had happened.

It wasn't even the overwhelming and often pants-wetting confusion that was all too common in this line of work, when he found himself hopping realities because another Voyager found themselves down a Harry and he would hardly be much use in his own when they were just blowing up the ship anyway, or when he woke up in Sickbay shaking off a nasty case of death.

No, this was a whole new brand of confusion, the kind that a man could only feel when he was jolted from sleep in the wee small hours of the morning, only to find Seven of Nine at his bedside, demanding to know what a Banana Phone was.

"Seven?" he croaked blearily. "What time is it?"

"Odd," she noted. "When I spoke with Captain Janeway about this matter, she was preoccupied with the time as well. Perhaps a Banana Phone is a measure of time."

He struggled into a sitting position and stared in disbelief.

"Hold on; you woke up the captain just to ask her what a Banana Phone is?"

"Unlike _others_ aboard Voyager, Captain Janeway doesn't consider sleep to be more important than expanding one's base of knowledge," Seven replied loftily.

_Just the fact that you chose to test that theory clearly means that the Borg aren't as smart as we've been giving them credit for_, Harry thought, shaking his head.

"Computer," Seven was meanwhile saying, "play musical selection Paris Banana."

"Oh, God, no," Harry whimpered, dropping his head to his hand as the jaunty introduction started up.

Seven sent him a curious look.

"I thought you weren't familiar with Banana Phones."

"I'm not," Harry said through his fingers. "But I am familiar with Tom's musical taste."

As the energetic, vaguely nonsensical seconds ticked past, Harry became aware that Seven was watching him expectantly.

"What?"

"Do you have any thoughts, Ensign Kim?"

Harry shot her a look somewhere between disbelief and pleading.

"On_ this_?"

"I require a number of different theories before I can draw the correct conclusion. For example, Captain Janeway seemed to believe that the Banana Phone is a tool of terrible vengeance."

"Listening to the song," Harry sighed, "I think I might have to agree."

* * *

When the morning dawned, bright and beautiful – not where they were, of course, as that would have signaled something very decidedly Not Right, but presumably somewhere in the vast expanse of the universe – Kathryn was mildly disturbed at the utter absence of guilt within her for the events of the previous night.

Of course, she was a little surprised to hear the music still going – surely Chakotay would have thought to turn the volume _down _at some point? – and she was starting to become concerned that the integrity of his skull would eventually fail if he kept slamming it into the wall like that, but no guilt to speak of.

Perhaps it was that her own rolling nausea and crushing headache left no room for thoughts of the suffering of others, or perhaps it was just that he was really, really funny when he was angry.

Either way, when he finally dropped exhaustedly into his seat, twenty minutes late after passing out into his breakfast, errant Corn Flakes still lingering at his hairline, she found herself not looking miserably away, but smiling radiantly.

"Good morning, Commander. You look ready to face the day!"

Whereupon Chakotay's eyes narrowed accusingly, before he looked pointedly away, muttering under his breath that yes, he was more than ready to face the day, if the day might present him with the opportunity to wring _someone's_ vicious, evil little neck.

Nevertheless, despite her utter lack of remorse for the events of last night and her hand in them (perhaps "hand" wasn't the right word; "arm and a goodly portion of torso" was a little more accurate), she was quite able to recognize and acknowledge that the joke had run its course. Therefore, when Chakotay asked, in a voice tight with restraint, if he could have a word in private, she resisted the urge, nearly second-nature by now, to deflect his request, and instead stood and gestured politely for him to follow.

So engrossed was he in attempting to light her hair on fire with a mere look, and so engrossed was she in ignoring the vague sound of singeing, that neither noticed the silent dialogue going on behind them.

_What did you do?_ Harry very pointedly Looked at Tom.

_It wasn't me!_ Tom stared fervently in his defense.

_Uh-huh; I'll buy that for a dollar,_ Harry eyed dryly, or words to that effect.

_Alright, what are you two turkeys up to over nyaw? _Tuvok peered sternly. Tuvok, incidentally, had always enjoyed these silent conversations and the opportunity they allowed him to completely and utterly break character.

_Way to go, Tom,_ Harry glared.

Tom gazed sadly into the imaginary camera that, in his mind, tended to follow him around and document his fascinating days and nights.

_Crap…_

* * *

"What seems to be the problem, Commander?" Janeway was meanwhile asking as the doors shut behind them.

Chakotay made a sound suspiciously like a snort.

"There _seems_ to be some music playing in my quarters. But I guess you already know that."

"Well, that's not much of a problem," she scoffed, picking up a nearby PADD and making a show of looking it over. "Music is a good thing, isn't it?"

"That depends on the music," he countered pleasantly, despite the daggers she could feel from his glare, poking determinedly at the top of her head. "The unexpected soundtrack of my life doesn't qualify."

"Hmm."

"Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, Bananaphone," he quoted flatly, his glare deepening. "Sound familiar?"

"I think might have heard something similar about a hundred and nineteen times last night," she replied with a shrug.

"I'm not surprised; as it turns out, I couldn't shut it off."

"Really?" she asked indifferently.

"Really. I tried everything. Up to and including hitting the console several times."

"Ah; well, perhaps if you would use your belongings more gently, they wouldn't break down and start playing strange musical selections."

"With programming to keep them playing indefinitely, that I conveniently don't have authorization to override," he added, moving toward her desk and leaning forward ever so slightly in an attempt to loom over her. "That's an interesting hardware failure."

"Very interesting," she agreed. After a moment, her eyes flickered up to meet his deeply annoyed gaze. "Commander, are you trying to imply something?"

Sighing at the realization that he might as well attempt to intimidate a brick wall, he dropped into the chair across from her.

"You don't think this is a little childish, Kathryn?"

Her eyebrows lifted slightly.

"I'm sorry, what's childish?"

"You really expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with this?"

"To do with what, exactly? Your rough treatment of your own belongings? How could I have caused that? Is my presence in your life that stressful?"

"You? Never," he scoffed. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "So, how do I turn it off?"

"Turn what off?"

"The music!"

"You don't like it?"

"It's the same song, over and over! And it was a bad song to start with!"

"If you don't like it, why are you listening to it over and over?"

He took a deep, calming breath, determinedly tamping down his urge to kill.

"I can't turn it off," he finally reminded her, very slowly deliberately.

"And you think it's _my_ fault?" she asked, surprised.

"Who else would it be?" he demanded, by now sitting on his hands lest he made the situation drastically worse by strangling her.

"Well, considering we're talking about _your_ computer here, I'd say you're the most likely suspect."

"Kathryn! I did not set my own computer to play a song about Bananaphones over and over! I don't even know what Bananaphones are!"

"So, call someone to take a look at it."

"I did! I called B'Elanna. She just swore at me in four different languages and terminated the connection."

"Good girl," Kathryn said under her breath.

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Nothing," she assured him, eyes wide and innocent.

"Then I tried calling Seven, but you know how _that_ ended."

She nodded her agreement, in blithe disregard of the increasingly deadly glares he was leveling at her.

"I don't think I was able to explain the significance of the Bananaphone to her satisfaction, but with any luck, she'll forget all about it."

"Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you? " he said resentfully.

"You know, if all else fails, you could always try calling someone other than B'Elanna or Seven."

He stared, bewildered.

"Why would I do that?"

"Good point," she conceded. Leaning back in her chair, she regarded him with a vaguely mischievous smile.

"Come on, Chakotay. You have to admit, it was kind of funny."

"No, it wasn't. It was childish and petty, and this kind of thing is beneath you."

"Well, _you_ usually have a better sense of humour than this," she huffed. "Or maybe it's only funny when it's not happening to you?"

He fixed her with a poisonous look, which was rather derailed when he let out a jaw-cracking yawn.

"I'm sure it's hilarious when I'm not running on twenty-seven seconds of sleep, with six and a half hours of Banana Phones rampaging through my brain."

She regarded him sympathetically.

"You do look exhausted. Why don't you go get some sleep?"

He eyed her suspiciously.

"Does that mean you're going to turn the music off?"

She waved off his query.

"I'll get to it."

Suddenly arriving at the conclusion that he no longer cared if his attempts at intimidation were successful or not, he took a menacing step towards her, only to be pleasantly surprised when her recently absent sense of self-preservation kicked in and she hopped carefully out of his range.

"Or we could do it now," she amended. "Would you like me to tuck you in and sing you a lullaby too?"

He made an incredulous noise.

"Kathryn, I've heard you sing. Bananaphone was bad enough."

With that, he turned on his heel and started for the door.

She watched him for a brief moment, pouting.

"I've never been more tempted to cut an album."

* * *

Nevertheless, the brief journey was made, their steps guided by the blaring of the Bananaphone, and once their goal was achieved, the aforementioned was brought to an immediate halt, all without any oddly motivated forays into an ill-fated musical career on the part of anyone involved.

Life, it seemed, had returned to normal, or at least as close as it had ever come around these nice people and their extended road trip.

Unfortunately, due to the involvement of the nice people in question, it of course could not last.

And so it was that, three days later, Voyager's fair captain was jolted into sudden wakefulness, not by a red alert, or an omnipotent being mysteriously ending up in her bed, or the multitude of other strange alarm clocks she'd acquired over the past seven years, but by the roar of explosives and rending metal.

* * *

"What the _crap_?" she did not yelp, most likely due to the lack of recent personality-altering head trauma in her life.

Instead, she leapt swiftly from the bed and bolted for the bedroom door, somehow managing to procure both combadge and phaser on the way.

She ground to a halt as her eyes lit on Chakotay seated comfortably on her sofa, tapping his foot happily along to a very familiar piece of music now filling both their quarters, due to the gaping, jagged hole in the wall.

"What did you do?" she demanded, perilously close to a squeak.

He smiled serenely.

"I just came to visit my good friend."

"What the hell is _that_?" This time, she landed quite squarely in squeak territory, with a little wild gesturing just for added flavour.

"I've been doing a little remodeling," he replied cheerfully.

"How?" she demanded, nearly a wail.

"Just a little something I whipped up while I couldn't sleep."

She struggled briefly for words.

"Chakotay," she finally began slowly. "_A little something_ would be a pair of socks, or a puff pastry. _That_—" She gestured emphatically to the jagged makeshift doorway. "—is a _hole _in my _wall_!"

"Huh," he said, studying his handiwork. "So it is."

"How did you even _do_ that?"

"Actually, I didn't; you did."

"What?"

"I modified your caffe ristretto program."

"I see," she said. "That would do it. That would also explain why I'm having the strangest urge to lick the rubble."

"No, I think that's just because you're insane," he said gently, patting her hand.

Turning pointedly away, Kathryn took several deep breaths and counted to ten. Then to twenty. Then to three hundred seventy-six.

"You," she said, stalking towards the sofa, "just blew out a wall with modified coffee. It takes a pretty sick mind to use something so wonderful for such fiendish and destructive purposes. I don't think you have _any_ business commenting on _my_ mental state."

"Actually, it was probably more the explosive blowing out the wall than the coffee. The coffee was just for an added touch of whimsy."

"Do you have any idea how easily your _whimsy_ could have breached the hull?"

"I wanted you to be able to enjoy the music with me."

"About that; _why_ is it playing again? I turned it off."

"And I turned it back on," he said cheerfully.

"I thought the whole problem was that you couldn't get rid of it! Why would you turn it back on?"

He fixed her with a dark glare.

"It might not have been playing out loud, but for the last two days, everywhere I go, all I can hear is Bananaphone. Do you know what that's _like_?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Believe me, I was considering breaching the hull, just to end my own life!"

"So, instead of listening to something else like a _rational_ person, you blasted a hole in our wall," she surmised with a huff, already turning. "I'm going to find someone to fix this. I wonder if B'Elanna is still up..."

"Sit down!" he barked, up in an instant and dragging her down to the couch with a tight grip on the back of her nightgown, before settling comfortably next to her and continuing with the same congenial calm as previously, "And listen to the song. After a while, it really does grow on you. Cellular, modular, interactive-odular…"

For a long moment, she was silent, considering her options.

"Listen, Chakotay, I know I could have handled this better, but—oh, my God, what's that?"

On reflex, he looked immediately in the direction she indicated, and then swore under his breath at the sensation of a faint breeze, distinctly like one that might be caused by a sleep-rumpled redhead in sleepwear shooting past him and out the door.

"I'm going to kill her," he muttered, already up and running. "Slowly."

* * *

End Notes: Okay, it's now a four-parter. Concision: I need to learn it.


End file.
